


if i stepped out of my body i would break into blossom

by lavenderlotion



Series: family, the lodestone of our lives [1]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Angst, Autistic Character, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Brotherhood of Mutants, Choking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Escape, Food Deprivation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Imprisonment, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Mental Institutions, Mind Manipulation, Mutant Powers, Not Canon Compliant, POV Alternating, Parent Erik Lehnsherr, Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Pre-Brother/Sister Incest, Repressed Memories, Rescue Missions, Secret Children, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Teleportation, Threats of Violence, Trans Female Character, Trans Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, straitjackets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24608299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion
Summary: He had a child, hadchildren,and he wasn't going to stop until he had them, safe at his side.
Relationships: Elizabeth Braddock & Erik Lehnsherr, Pietro Maximoff & Charles Xavier
Series: family, the lodestone of our lives [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778977
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	if i stepped out of my body i would break into blossom

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be another long, sprawling universe, I can already promise you that. If you want to know what's going on with the timeline in this fic, check out the series notes! 
> 
> A big thanks to [Midrashic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/pseuds/midrashic) for betaing this AND cheering me on while I wrote it! Your help was invaluable <3 
> 
> In case you're wondering about the _Pre-Brother/Sister Incest_ tag: there's nothing more than a few very innocent comments in this first fic, however it will come up in later works.

When Charles had first sought out Erik’s bastard son after hearing the fate his  _ wife _ and daughter had fared... this certainly hadn’t been what he was expecting. He’d planned on using Peter to remind Erik that he still had something to live for and that taking over the earth alongside an evil, deluded madman was absolutely  _ not  _ something he should partake in. In fact, he hadn’t been expecting anything more than meeting a very hyper young man and hopefully saving his old friend from the clutches of En Sabah Nur.

Now, nearly a year later and... well, there was certainly something to be said about not-so-happy accidents, and this was  _ not _ something Charles could say he was particularly thrilled about. 

But then again, it seemed everything regarding Erik’s first bunch of children was an accident. 

With a heavy, exhausted sigh and a thumping behind his temples, Charles asked, “I’m sorry... you have a  _ brother?”  _ just to ensure that he’d heard the lad correctly. 

Peter, stood concerningly still in front of him as he fiddled with his fingers in the middle of Charles’ office, nodded his head rapidly. “Ah-yup, that’s what I just said, man. A twin, actually.” Peter had always spoken quickly and that hadn’t changed even an inch over the last year. “At least, I’m pretty damn sure that they were my twin? The memories are kinda hazy, ya know? Ma was always telling me not to ask about him and shit and eventually I guess I just put him outta my mind ‘cause I couldn’t ask about him anyway.”

“I see,” Charles murmured quietly, and then  _ did _ see as he slipped through Peter’s racing thoughts and did his very best to keep up with his whirling memories. 

Peter  _ had _ grown up with a brother—a twin, to be exact—that he’d been incredibly close with. The two of them had been together constantly, thick as thieves and the best of friends. It was difficult to make out a timeline of events from Peter’s memories alone, but the boy remembered certain things: his brother smearing their mother’s lipstick over his lips before smacking a kiss to Peter’s cheek with a giggle, toys sliding from Peter’s hands and into Wilson’s, yelling, crying,  _ flying,  _ and finally, never seeing his brother again. 

There had been months and  _ months _ of Peter regularly asking after his lost brother, even when asking about him meant that he would get punished—sometimes a grounding, sometimes a smack across the face—until he’d finally stopped, holding Wilson in his memory but never asking his ma about him. But that silence came at a cost as then, so slowly his young mind hadn’t even realized the thoughts were slipping away, he’d all but forgotten about his twin brother. 

Forgotten, that is, until he’d seen his father in the flesh, until he’d backed down from admitting a terrifying truth, and he’d been plagued with dreams-turned-memories of a young, playful boy. 

_ Oh, you poor boys, _ Charles thought with an aching chest. He drew himself back to the moment at hand only to find Peter pacing back and forth along his office so quickly that Charles’ eyes couldn’t hope to follow him and he only knew that Peter was pacing because of the linear blur it created. 

“Peter...” Charles cautioned, watching as he came to a sudden standstill, sharpening back into focus. Before Charles could finish his statement, Peter was off speaking at a pace Charles could only keep up with for his eleven long months of practice. 

“Ah... well ya know how I kinda went AWOL the other week? Yeah, well. I figured since I was eighteen and not living at home and all, it didn’t really matter if I upset Ma by asking her about him. It wasn’t like she could kick me out or anything since I don’t even live there, ya know? And who cares if she got mad? Wasn’t like she could do anything about it now that I’m, like, an X-Man and shit, so I showed up, and I asked about him. ‘Cause... if I’ve got a brother out there, I should  _ know,  _ shouldn’t I?” Peter took a deep, heaving breath during which Charles tried to cut in but was too slow. 

“From what I remembered I loved him. I loved him a lot. And I don’t got all that much family, ya know? My Ma  _ sucks _ and I don’t really got a Dad ‘cause... well, ‘cause you know, and there’s my sister, and I love her, but she’s also the biggest pain in my ass ever—and I mean, sometimes it’s kinda hard to deal with her ‘cause Ma was always a lot nicer ‘cause she got a husband outta that one—so she doesn’t even really count. Having a brother, a freaking  _ twin _ brother... that could be totally groovy, don’tcha think?” 

Another heaving breath, only this time it wasn’t followed by another bout of rambling. Charles smiled as kindly as he could, not at all liking that one of his favourite pupils—and not only because he’d helped the rest of the X-Men save the world—was so obviously distressed, and politely asked, “Is there anything else that you’d like to get off your chest?”

Peter hummed, and even though his thoughts went at a racing pace Charles could hardly make sense of, he knew the boy took his time to think about it.

“Uh... nah, I think that about covers it? I’ve got a brother and my Ma locked him in this mental ward, like,  _ years and years  _ ago and now I wanna get him out.” Peter finished his statement with a hopeful smile that broke Charles’ heart into pieces with how very hollow it was. Despite the nigh year Peter had spent at the mansion, he was still so horribly untrusting of anything good. When Charles thought about how his mother behaved... well, it wasn’t much of a surprise. 

“Peter, I promise you, I will do  _ everything _ within my power to make sure we get Wilson to safety, alright?” Charles told him seriously, ensuring that he held eye contact. He reached out a hand and let it hover in the air under Peter’s weary eyes, not feeling the least bit offended as uncertainty and doubt plagued the young boy’s mind. After all, Charles knew what it was like to be hurt by those that were supposed to protect you. 

Peter took his time staring at Charles’ hand, his body stock-still in a way that Charles wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before today. Peter was a constant, ever-moving source of energy that couldn’t stay still. Similarly to the way his thoughts were always racing, there was usually a body part that was doing the same. Whether it was a tapping finger or a shaking leg, Peter was always moving. 

Except for now, as he stared at Charles’ outstretched hand silently and stayed perfectly still. “Y-yeah,” Peter whispered after another few moments wherein his mind ran through every single possible outcome he could think of in the span of several heartbeats—one-hundred-thirty-seven scenarios, to be exact—and his hand slowly closed around Charles’ outstretched fingers. “Yeah, Prof X, that’d be awesome.”

Charles nodded with a gentle smile and called for Hank to get Cerebro up and running. Peter knew the name and location of the facility his brother was being kept in, but Charles wanted to look into the place first. It wouldn't do anyone any good to show up at a facility that’d been holding a mutant for the last twelve years and somehow keeping them under control—or, as Charles suspected with a twisting of his stomach, powerless—without knowing anything about the facility itself. 

With a few more kind words, Charles sent Peter off to rest as he did a bit of research. This was going to be quite the task for the X-Men, considering there was a looming feeling of dread centred in the pit of Charles’ stomach that never meant anything good. And, amongst his own worried thoughts, there was one statement that softly echoed over everything else, ashamed as he was to admit something so foolish was such a focal point. 

Erik had two sons. 

* * *

“Y-You have kids,” Callisto, a mutant he’d only picked up a few weeks ago, gasped through her tightening airway as Erik further restricted her ability to breathe with the pretty chain that she wore around her neck. 

“My child is  _ dead,” _ Erik snarled around the suffocating feeling in his own throat. Cool metal pressed into soft, supple flesh as Erik’s mutation flexed and tightened, his metal-sense singing along with his anger as he drew the thin, stainless steel band even tighter. “How dare you even  _ think  _ to say something like that?”

Her nails clawed at the chain, leaving red marks along her skin. Erik knew he should stop. Knew that he should let her go. But all he could feel was the gut-wrenching weight of his dead family in his arms as they bled out for his sins. “I-I’m not—” she gasped, unable to suck in a full breath. Her heavily lined eyes were blown wide and bloodshot from the lack of oxygen. He could kill her, so easily. “I swear to y-you.”

The hold he had on Callisto’s necklace fell away and so did she, dropping to the ground with a thud as Belladonna rushed forward and checked her over. Erik had been many, many things during his time, but he’d never been a murderer towards his own kind. With a deep breath, he pinned her to the laminate flooring with each bit of metal across her body, not allowing her to move as his heart raced and his skin felt like it was going to split open. 

_ You have kids. _ Her words haunted him even now, echoing through the back of his mind. 

Anger burned through Erik’s blood; promises meant nothing to him after the evils he’d faced. He took another deep breath and pushed himself into every scrap of metal through the cottage they were currently staying in and then pushed his mutation  _ deeper,  _ enhanced as it now was, until his metal-sense was in the very  _ earth _ under them and he knew with a simple flick of his wrist he could crush them all. 

It brought him only a small measure of cheapened comfort, and he listened to Belladonna check over Callisto with a cool sense of detachment he hadn’t felt in decades. He was too busy drowning under the familiar feel of loss to worry about the one who’d dredged up his pain. The familiar shape of Elizabeth’s bracelet moved across the room and drew his attention. Erik made each member a small medallion when they joined his cause. It was something he hadn’t done... before, the first time he’d tried leading a team of mutants, and he’d regretted it for years afterwards as one by one the people he’d come to care for had been picked off and there’d been nothing Erik could do to find them or keep them safe.

“Erik! She’s telling the truth,” Elizabeth told him in a heated whisper, now at his side. He felt her distant, shadowy touch along his thoughts and jerked his head away, forcefully erecting steel walls around his mind and turning to her with narrowed eyes. 

She’d been with him the longest, finding him the moment Erik had left the institute behind to work on building his own future for mutant-kind. She was his second, if he had one, and he looked at her in shock at the telepathic touch. It was only then that Erik tore his eyes off the girl in front of him and realized his Brotherhood was standing around him and watching him with wary eyes. 

Elizabeth’s eyes lit up with her power and she said, “She had no idea you had a daughter and she’s talking about two different mutants. This isn’t Ni—”

“Don’t you dare speak her name,” Erik growled harshly, though he still stumbled back a step and only remained upright because of a tug to his belt buckle and another to his cuff links. Elizabeth reached out but didn’t touch him, and Erik’s eyes fell back to Callisto. 

He didn’t want to believe her. This wasn’t even something Erik had ever allowed himself to hope for. He eyed Callisto uneasily even as his whole world reoriented itself, a feeling previously only caused by Charles Xavier and wholly unwelcome now. When Callisto had come to him and told him she had found something interesting, this...  _ mein Gott, _ this was the last fucking thing he ever could have imagined. 

_ “I’ve found a mutant. They feel like you do in a way I’ve only ever felt between family members.”  _ Had been her exact words. 

Erik knew he could have living family, despite the thoroughness of Schmidt’s men, and there was a chance that he had distant cousins still walking the earth. He knew that he wasn’t the only one of his people to survive, after all. It was... not impossible to believe that he had living family. 

But  _ children?  _ His... children? 

Hope had always been a dangerous thing. The desperate, clinging hope as a child that he would be able to please Schmidt and that somehow he and his mama would be safe. Then the dark, suffocating hope that one day the pain would end. The drowning hope that ending Shaw’s life would bring Erik some measure of peace. His altruistic hope of saving his own kind. 

The feeble, fragile hope of being  _ happy.  _

“Tell me everything you know,” he demanded, suddenly unable to keep still as his heart beat painfully in his chest. The cuff he wore around his own wrist melted into a sphere and began circling him rapidly, making intricate swirls around his body as he held himself stock-still, his entire body lined with tension. 

Callisto was still breathing heavily and a touch of remorse coloured Erik’s desperate confusion. He certainly hadn’t reacted calmly but... there was nothing else he could have done at such a claim. With Belladonna’s help she stood and straightened her back. Erik felt pride burst in his chest when she met his eyes straight-on and stared him down despite the deep indentation along her neck. She was one of his people for a reason. 

When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse but steady. “Two mutants. A speedster, faster than any I’ve ever felt and... something else. I can’t pin down a power  _ or _ a class and that ain’t ever happened to me before.”

Erik growled, a noise he would have likened to McCoy during his beastlier days. He clung to his anger as he’d done countless times in the past and let his rage burn under his skin. Anything to keep himself held together as the world spun out from under him and left him desperate for answers. “What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“Best as I can explain to you: it feels like their power is being suppressed. They feel muted in a way I ain’t ever felt before. I only felt them ‘cause I was lookin’ out for the speedster.” 

Callisto was still new and the claims she was making were... they were harder to believe by the minute. Or, perhaps, Erik just didn’t  _ want _ to believe them. Despite trusting her, Erik couldn’t bring himself to blindly follow what she was telling him. Not... well, not when she was claiming he could be a father again. Erik’s eyes found Elizabeth’s without a conscious thought and he didn’t look away until she nodded her head. 

_ Mein Gott.  _

“Where?” Erik asked in a tone of voice he didn’t recognize. He sounded desperate. “I need to know where they are.”

“The speedster is with the X-Men,” she sneered, but Erik felt his heart rate kick up.  _ Charles _ had his child. Did he... certainly he couldn’t know, could he? 

It couldn’t be the one that Erik met, could it? There was no way that Erik had been face-to-face with his son, had stared into his eyes, and  _ not known?  _ Erik staggered back another step and this time caught himself on a barstool he pulled across the kitchen, sitting down heavily as his brain whirled, drawing up blurred and faded memories from nearly a year ago of a young boy he hadn’t had reason to think much of since. 

That could be his _son._ _Hölle, he could have a son._

He tried to do the math. The kid couldn’t have been out of his teens and... it was only a memory, but there’d been a woman who’d given him safety as he’d run from the police, before his face had been released to the media. He’d slept with her a number of times, still feeling raw from Charles despite the years that’d passed and needing to distract himself from the heartache that came with losing the love of his life and every friend he’d ever made.

The timing lined up. But could Erik have really fathered children? Despite his masculine preferences, he knew how it all worked. He’d had a family, after all, but that left the question of... ah, another attempt at forgetting Charles. Well, then yes, when he really thought about it, two children  _ were _ possible. But that also meant that he had children he’d never been told about. Children that had lived without a father.  _ Scheisse! _

“What about the other one?” he asked, barely hearing his own voice with the way his mind was wheeling. 

Despite everything racing through his thoughts, he kept snagging on one indisputable fact. Charles... he had to know. How could he not? 

Callisto nodded and said, “That... I can’t tell you for sure, not with the way they’re muted. I  _ can _ find ‘em. Hell, I can give you a guess and if you got me close I could pinpoint it for sure. But like I said, they’re hella muted and I’d be guessin’ to start; you’d have to get me closer.”

He looked up to Callisto and gave her a heavy nod before bidding a quiet, “I’m sorry,” to which she nodded her head and turned away. There was nothing more that Erik could say for his outburst. There wasn’t a single one of them who was a stranger to loss; they all knew grief intimately. He turned to Elizabeth and found the same grin plastered on her face as the one she wore every time they had a mission. 

“I’m already on it,” she told him with a roll of her eyes, and Erik felt the first smile he’d managed to dredge up all day playing over his lips as the shadows in the room slithered from corners and under tables to Elizabeth’s feet before they slid up her thighs. “Callisto,” she said, holding out her hand. The other woman took it cautiously and Erik cut the lights for a single heartbeat. 

When he let them flicker back on, the women were gone. 

He turned to his Brotherhood and felt a grimace cross his face at the way they were watching him. Erik thrived on fear, but not from his fellow mutant. “I may need your help to get my children back.” 

A few nodded, a few dropped their eyes. It was more than Erik could hope for after his outburst. Even still, he couldn’t bring himself to be bothered by the way he’d acted under the weight of what he’d learned. He’d only responded to what he’d been told, and it was shocking, to say the very least. 

He... he had a  _ child,  _ had  _ children, _ and he wasn't going to stop until he had them, safe at his side. 

* * *

The ceiling was smooth. White. Everything was white, but the ceiling was broken up by the lines of its tiles and the yellow, bare light bulbs that hung down from metal poles. Sometimes she remembered what the ceiling at home had been like; her tutor had called it a popcorn ceiling and she had tried very hard not to laugh, because laughing wasn’t good here. There wasn’t much she remembered from home. She remembered Peter. 

She would always remember Peter. 

Eyes falling closed, she brought up one of her favourite memories. It was tinged along the edges with a light, loving pink, faded with age but kept alive by her persistence. This particular memory was one of many she’d held on to over the years of white walls and white floors and white ceilings. In this memory, her most favourite of them all, she and Peter were playing pretend. It was their favourite game—she remembered that, too—and it was the very first time she had ever flown. 

Peter had laughed and jumped and clapped his hands. She had clapped her hands, too, head brushing her popcorn ceiling. Then she made Peter fly with her. Peter pretended to be Peter Pan so she pretended to be his best friend because she _ was _ his best friend. He had laughed and called her Wendy and then their mother had come home. 

That was when she made the memory end. 

Sometimes she wondered what Peter would look like now. She didn’t have a father to impress Peter upon so she didn’t know. Sometimes she looked at herself and imagined what  _ she _ would have looked like. She had strong cheekbones. A sharp jaw. But the apples of her cheeks were rounded. Her hair was long. She wondered if Peter had the same cheekbones and jaw. When she tried to make him older in her mind, he was always handsome. She also wondered if that was only wishful thinking.

Before she could pluck another memory to live in—thoughts of Peter were kept in the safest corner of her mind, the part she’d spent a decade layering sparking stems of electrical energy, a lightning storm of her telepathy to keep safe the one thing she loved—her door opened. She’d had many guards over her long years with the Institute. Gerald was her favourite. 

“Good morning, princess.” His voice was kind and his thoughts were simple. When she got out, she wouldn’t kill him. She had been deeply entrenched in his mind more than once; he had no idea the evils he helped commit. 

“Hello, Gerald,” she said quietly. The cot they called a bed was a slab of cement connected to the wall opposite the door with a thin mattress pad, and she used her core muscles to pull herself into a sitting position. 

When she looked at him, he had a smile on his face and his eyes on the ground. His index finger tapped his thigh as he stood in the entryway. “You may come in.”

For the last seven weeks, a guard hadn’t barged into her room just because they wanted to. For the last seven weeks, her guard had called her “princess” without an iota of malicious sarcasm. For the last seven weeks, she’d felt respected. It had been twelve years since she had last felt respected. 

“How are you doing?” Gerald asked her just like he did each morning he came to check on her and then again each afternoon and each evening. 

“How are  _ you _ doing?” she asked instead of answering, just like she did three times a day, every day. 

“I’m very good, thank you,” he told her. This was his morning answer. In the afternoons, it was just “good” and by evening it was “well”. Gerald knew that not everything at the Institute was as it seemed, but nothing more, no specifics; all he wanted was to help children flourish and give them the support he hadn’t gotten. They had been the only “school” to hire him. 

He nodded his head, and then started. 

He had a routine. 

He took a step forward, paused, then took another step. She pushed herself into a standing position with another flex of her core and took three steps forward, two to the left, to the plastic chair she was allowed to sit in. It had been given to her after a year without an incident. A gift. Once she was sitting on the chair, Gerald made his way further into the room in a very straight line, as if he were following invisible tiles along the floor. 

A sharp turn once he’d taken another seven long strides. Then just one to her chair. 

The thin threads of her telepathy burst forward, slithering into Gerald’s mind before cackling with delight. They moved all over freely. They jumped from his simple, conscious thoughts to his memory centre and pain receptors, before the tendrils of her power sharpened, thickened, layering over each other along his occipital lobe and his parietal lobe. 

She turned on her chair so that her back would be exposed. She felt him bend over. The air shifted around her as he got closer, the hairs along her neck standing on end. Gerald was safe. Gerald was gentle. The others had never been. Sometimes she still felt afraid. Before he touched the straps that held her arms her telepathy shot through his mind and halted his movement and his thoughts, freezing him for a single beat of her heart in which she wrapped the tendrils of her power around a memory she’d used for the last thirty-four days and brought it to the forefront of his mind. 

Then Gerald continued in his set routine, only now his hands were an inch away from her body. In his mind he patted her arms and ensured her hands were tucked tightly against her sides and held in with an extra bit of wrapping. He felt her fingertips under the pad of his thumb and made sure they were safely tucked away. He walked around her body to ensure the fit at the front was secure. He circled her again as he checked her over a second time. His palms felt the cool metal of the bangles keeping her arms held tightly around her sides and completely unable to move while they moved through the air without touching anything. 

“You’re all set for your day,” he told her, a familiar phrase she wasn’t going to miss. 

Her heart started racing so loudly it was all she could hear. She bit into her bottom lip and took a deep breath through her nose and...

She moved her fingers. 

_ She moved her fingers. _

With shaking breath she gave Gerald a smile and didn’t bid him her own practiced farewell. Without a second of hesitation she pushed every single shred of power she could gather into his mind and told him to  _ go home _ with so much strength he stood up and walked out of her room without looking back or closing the door. 

The smile didn’t fall from her face. It grew and grew until she had to bite into her bottom lip hard enough she tasted copper to keep from laughing loudly. Her eyes flooded with tears. She flexed her wrists.  _ She wiggled her fingers _ for the first time in a decade. The tape that kept them tightly bound together eventually slipped free and she gasped, looking around her room with wide eyes. She rolled her head back as the world lit up around her in the most beautiful array of pretty pinks and ruddy reds she’d ever seen. 

She took another deep breath that felt like it filled and filled her chest. Nothing had ever felt as good as this. 

When she stood up, she didn’t mind that her thighs flexed. It would be the last time she’d ever have to stand up using only her core and thigh muscles. The last time her hands would be strapped to her sides. Completely breathless, she looked around the  _ cage _ that had been her room for far longer than she’d known anything else. She kept steadily moving her fingers. She couldn’t stop. The more she waved them in the scant space she had between the small of her back and the heavy fabric of the jacket, the brighter the world became. 

_ Oh my God, _ she thought, dizzyingly. She stumbled back a step and hit her chair with the back of her knees and almost fell. After living in a straitjacket for a decade she knew how to balance herself. Once she had her footing her mind started to race with all the possibilities of what it meant that her fingers were free. Again and again they kept snagging on the same thought, running it on repeat as another giddy laugh bubbled up her throat before she bit it back down. 

_ She was free. _

Holy hell, she was free. She didn’t need to look around her room to know there wasn’t anything she would want. There wasn’t anything she owned. Her room had what the Institute called a bed. She had the slippers they gave her at the foot of it. Her chair was beside her and there was a small radio on the floor beside the door. There were two floor-to-ceiling windows that granted her absolutely zero privacy. Not that she’d ever been able to do anything with it, but...

Now wasn’t the time to get lost in thought. She had nothing else. She only had herself but that was all she needed. Gerald had left a few minutes ago and it was getting closer and closer to the time he’d normally take her for breakfast. She knew what she had to do. If she was going to get out— _ God, she could finally get out— _ she needed to move quickly. 

Her first step forward was on shaking knees. Her bare feet met cool cement and she wondered, for a moment, what it would feel like to walk on wood, or grass, or even dirt. The memories of Peter were some of the only ones she had of before she’d been admitted. There were things she couldn’t wait to learn again. She just had to get out. 

Thankfully her next step was on steadier feet. She kept her fingers moving behind her back. Her heart raced and her blood pumped and everything felt like too much and not enough. She was absolutely terrified of what would happen if she couldn’t get out. Once she’d been punished because she hadn’t willingly participated during one of the  _ invasive _ physical exams she had to take. They had only fed her one meal a day for an entire week. 

The punishment for this... she had no idea if anyone had ever tried to break out before. They’d kept her away from other children during her entire stay. They’d said she would be a bad influence. Shaking the hair out of her eyes, she flipped the long strands over her shoulders and wondered if she could get a haircut one day. She’d seen her doctor once, with her hair down, and it’d hung at her shoulders. That could be nice. 

Stepping from her room and into the hallway made her wince. She carefully set her foot down on the cement floor outside her door; at first she only let the tips of her toes touch down, before the ball of her foot and lastly, slowly, her heel. When nothing happened she brought her other foot forward until she was standing in the hall, all on her own.

Still, nothing happened. 

Oh God, she could really get out. 

Thankfully she had been inside Gerald’s mind enough times to know where to go. She’d walked these basement hallways often enough to know there were only a few other mutants kept down here; she was the only one who looked close to “human” on the entire floor. It stung her heart to walk past them and do nothing. But she had a collar around her neck and only one hand free and no idea what that even allowed. She couldn’t risk it. Not when she wasn’t even sure she could get herself free. 

She would come back. She vowed that she would come back as she passed cages silently, keeping her fingers twirling behind her back and imaging herself shrouded in darkness. Shadows clung to her as she walked. None of the mutants reacted to her, not even the ones looking out of their glass walls. Maybe they couldn’t see her? She hoped they couldn’t see her. 

She reached the first door and ran the tip of her middle finger up and down the length of her index finger three times before it opened in a burst of scarlet light. Her smile grew wide as she hurried up the steps of a wide staircase as quietly as she could, keeping her pinky moving and willing her feet to be silent. There was a lot to think about but she was used to thinking about many things at once. It came easy to her now. The next door only took a single pass of her middle finger slowly sliding up her index finger to open. She felt something like hope bubbling up in her chest and expanding within her heart. 

She hadn’t felt hope in years. 

Okay. Okay, she could do this. She  _ had _ to do this. She wouldn’t be able to live through another night. Not when she’d gotten this far. Just the very  _ possibility _ of a punishment waiting to come... she couldn’t fail. She couldn’t even stop to think about all the people she was leaving behind. Regret would only slow her down and slowing down would... well, it would probably get her killed. 

If not—she knew that there were worse fates than death.

She stepped through the doorway that had opened with a single move of her finger and noted that this hallway wasn’t made of cement but the tile under her feet was white. Everything in this godforsaken building was white. She’d always hated it. Now it contrasted almost prettily with the light spilling out around her, the same red as her telepathy. It felt like she had another limb as it brushed against the stark tile. She could  _ feel _ what it felt like the whisper of a touch against her skin. She tapped the pad of her middle finger against the nail of her index finger. Tilting her head to the side, she watched a crack appear in the floor and moved forward to feel it with her toe. 

The sharp edge catching against her skin jolted her back to the present. Her heart started beating so loudly that it was all she could hear. It echoed in her ears and reminded her that she was on a ticking clock. They would notice she was gone soon enough. She had to be faster, she reminded herself, fully stepping out of the staircase and then turning to the right. 

At the end of the hallway there was a group of guards standing around and facing away from her. Her heart leapt into her throat as fear chilled her blood. This... this wasn’t good. This was  _ bad. _ She needed to go past them. At the end of the hallway, right where they were all standing, was another hallway that would lead to the front door of the Institute. She  _ had _ to go that way because it was the only Gerald had ever gone and the only way she knew. 

Hell, it could  _ be _ the only way out. 

She took a deep breath. Told herself to calm down. Did her best to keep her heart rate steady and keep herself from acting on any of the ridiculous ideas racing through her mind. A plan. What she needed was a  _ plan.  _ First she considered screaming and seeing if she could somehow slip past them when they were confused. Then she considered turning back, slipping back into her cell with no one the wiser. She considered bringing the entire building down around her. 

No.  _ No.  _

God, especially not the last one. 

She couldn’t hurt innocent children, not when those children were undoubtedly as miserable as she had been. It wasn’t like any of them were here by choice. She had to think. There was something she could do. There  _ had _ to be something she wasn’t thinking of. She’d always thought herself to be smart. She’d had her tutor and she’d listened to the news on her radio and her brain had always been able to piece together the information she was missing from seemingly nowhere. It was hard to know if she truly was intelligent or was only intelligent in the Institute, but she had to believe in herself now. 

As she stood in the shadows and watched a group of guards laugh together she couldn’t seem to think of anything complicated enough to seem plausible. 

But maybe... it could be simple? What if she  _ didn’t _ need to come with a complicated plan of action? With a deep breath she started twirling all of her fingers at once, waving them back and forth so quickly that scarlet tendrils of flickering light began to circle her body before they shot off to the end of the hall like crackling strikes of lightning. 

She took a step forward and didn't want them to see her; none of them saw a single thing. 

As much as she wanted to take this place to the ground and reduce the entire Institute to rubble, she knew that she couldn’t. Not now. Not when there were children inside. Children that had been sent away from their families as she had. Children who’d been promised to be taught, to be nurtured, only to be held in a prison with collars around their throats. So instead of seeing just what else she could do with a power she had only known for days before they stole it away from her, she slipped past the guards on silent feet. Soft, gentle red light softened each step she took until she didn’t make a sound. 

She didn’t see anyone else after she had edged past the group of guards. Turning into the hallway she needed, she felt her heart climb up into her throat. The front door was mere feet away and there wasn’t a single person anywhere near her. Doors lined the front entryway and led off into various rooms. She ignored them. They meant nothing to her now. She straightened her back as she marched down the hall; she strode purposefully toward her freedom. No longer would she be a prisoner. No longer would she sleep on concrete. Go to the bathroom with an audience. Wash herself in a communal shower. No longer would she eat sludge force-fed to her by guards that liked it when she choked. No longer would she have to listen to her “tutor” tell her that she was wrong, that she was disgusting, that there was something within her that made her evil. 

No longer would she be treated like she was  _ less than _ because she had power. 

She stopped in front of the door separating her from everything she had ever dreamed of and finally let a laugh escape her throat. 

It felt so good. 

With a deep breath and a small flick of her wrist, for that was all the movement her jacket allowed, the front door blew right out of the wall and sent rubble raining down. 

It was with a grin that she stepped over the rubble. She knew she’d made noise—and a lot of it, at that—but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Just outside there was...  _ something _ that was causing her heart to race even faster than it had during her entire escape. She could feel so, so many bright minds. It was an off feeling. They all looked like dull, flickering stars far off in the distance. She wondered if they would be brighter without her collar. 

Instead of trying to look into any of the flickering minds she could feel, she carefully stepped over giant chunks of cement and looked curiously at the dented iron doors with a wide smile. She tilted her head to the side and hummed inquisitively. Her gaze fell down to the metal straps keeping her jacket in place with a frown. What if she... 

With a snap of her fingers the jacket fell away. 

She finally brought her eyes back up the crowd before her and—

It... it was  _ him.  _

It was Peter,  _ her brother,  _ who was beautiful in the sunlight. He had  _ grey hair _ and it was shining. His eyes were trained on her in a way that made her feel powerful, and he was surrounded by... a whole lot of other people who were all staring at her with shock bleeding from their minds. 

And she didn’t care. She was  _ free.  _

Her head tipped back and she felt the sun against her face. A smile pulled at her lips as she  _ spread out her arms.  _ God, it felt so good to move. When she finally looked back at the gathered group of people, another laugh bubbled out of her throat. 

“Hello,” she called, locking eyes with a ginger-bearded man whose mind felt familiar in a way that caused her skin to erupt in goosebumps. “I’m Wendy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wendy's backstory is inspired by the cartoon _X-Men: Evolution_ and the way she's treated there. I took some of those elements and twisted a few things around to create this universe! 
> 
> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://lavender-lotion.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> kudos are much appreciated, but, for the author, it isn’t the same as getting a comment, not even close. so a comment, as short and sweet or as sprawling and sporadic as you can manage, would be _greatly_ appreciated! 
> 
> i run an x-men discord server! check it out [here!](https://discord.gg/3uG3VNP)


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